It’s A Day I Think About A Lot

“Can you pick up the girls from school? I just don’t think I have the strength to do it.”

My sister’s voice sounded a little shaky and I reassured her that I would be happy to do that. I asked for her to explain the pick-up procedures at her girls’ elementary school, because all the schools seem to have slightly different rules. I spoke cheerfully, but inside I was quietly devastated. I didn’t want to think too hard about what it meant that we were to a point in her illness that she no longer had the strength to drive the two miles to her kids’ school to pick them up.

Her health had been declining for a couple of years, but she had always been able to do what needed to be done to take care of her kids. Now, things were changing.

I was shaking as I drove to the school, holding back tears. I thought the least I could do is put on a smile and greet her girls happily as they came out of the school. They weren’t expecting me, and I was worried that when they saw I was there to pick them up, it would also occur to them that we were at a new low in their mom’s illness. The last thing I wanted to do was make this any harder on them than it already was.

“Stop overthinking everything,” I scolded myself as I made my way into the long line of cars waiting for school pick up. But still I held back tears.

I was confused about what was happening in the pick up line. My sister had explained that I should stay in the car line, and the girls will wait by the front of the school, and when my car got right in front, they would see me and get in my van. But it wasn’t working that way. A few people had stopped and gotten out of their cars to go get their kids and bring them to their cars, parked in the pick up line. I wasn’t sure what to do.

Then I saw the girls, looking in the opposite direction from where I was. I was afraid they wouldn’t see me, so I did what I had seen others do. I parked and walked up to them.

“Hey girls!” I called

“What’s going on?” the older one asked when she saw me, “Why isn’t mom picking us up?”

It was the question I was hoping they wouldn’t ask.

As we walked back to my parked van, I calmly explained that I came to pick them up because their mom just wasn’t feeling well enough to do it. I could see it register on their faces that this was new and scary.

Just as we reached the van, the woman from the car behind me in the line got out of her car and approached me.

“Oh my God! You are being a complete idiot! Do you not have any understanding of how the pick up line works? We have been in school for MONTHS! GOD! You don’t PARK in the pick up line!”

I told the girls to get in the car.

I turned to the woman, “No, I don’t know how this pick up line works, this is my first time here picking up my nieces.”

“Well, for starters you are supposed to drive all the way to the front and you don’t PARK and GET OUT OF YOUR CAR!”

She wouldn’t stop. I felt too devastated to respond. I got in the car, and drove the girls home. I drove them back to their house where their sick mom lay in bed. I drove them back to the place where they knew, and I knew, that their mom was dying.

I have thought of this story hundreds, possibly thousands of times. When someone in public does something frustrating, or isn’t following the rules, or acts rudely, I think about this experience.

I try with everything I have to be kind anyway. This woman didn’t know my story. She didn’t know I was using every single bit of strength to make it through this conversation with my nieces. She didn’t know I was staring the hard realities of losing my sister right in the face at that moment. If she knew, I hope she would have been more kind. I don’t believe every person I encounter in public is in the middle of dealing with some extremely hard realities.

But what if they are?